25 Reasons To Love Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’

Given that African music is forged in the face of famine, genocide and sectarian beheadings, it’s hardly surprising that British-sized problems like misplaced car keys, paper jams and Ocado delivering a substitute for the HobNobs evaporate with the rubbery bounce of ‘The Boy In The Bubble’…

2It’s a genuine political statement…
With apartheid in full swing circa 1985, Paul Simon was initially condemned for breaking the cultural boycott on South Africa, before the world twigged he was actually giving black musicians a global platform and the regime the finger. All of which feels slightly more tangible than Lily Allen’s ‘Fuck You’.

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Most ’60s behemoths would have accompanied ‘Graceland’ with sepia-tinted footage of themselves using a hand-plough and watching a vaccination. Respect to Simon, who simply flew into Johannesburg, stood toe-to-toe with the greatest musicians on the scene, knocked out a stone-cold classic, and quietly donated $100,000 of royalties to anti-apartheid charities.

4Because the lyrics are bonkers

“Wey-mama-si-lah-in-mah-weh!” boom the Ladysmith Black Mambazo choir in ‘Homeless’, and while it’s entirely possible these men are singing the instruction manual to a domestically-produced mini-kettle, it still sounds incredible.

5Paul Simon’s storytelling is genius/gibberish

Vignettes about porky archangels, babies with baboon hearts and roly-poly little bat-faced girls are frankly baffling, but utterly magnetic. “And I could say ooh-ee-ooh, and everybody would know what I was talking about,” notes the singer in ‘Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes’. Well, no, not really, Paul – but carry on.

6It pisses all over ‘Mali Music’

Although that’s hardly surprising, given that it doesn’t feature Damon Albarn puffing into that fucking Fisher Price recorder.

Respect to the Roses, but ‘Don’t Stop’ essentially is the end of ‘Under African Skies’, three years later, and half as atmospheric. If you insist on doing things backwards – and seriously, must you? – then here’s the blueprint…

9Even your parents like it

Their glovebox is a graveyard for yuppie set-texts, but Phil Collins’ ‘No Jacket Required’ is narrowly averted by the discovery of ‘Graceland’ beneath a tin of travel sweets. Oh God, now your dad is slapping the steering-wheel.

10Having said that…

… the tight-fisted bastards never took my pre-pubescent self to see the legendary Graceland concerts of the late-’80s. Our generation finally gets its chance at this year’s 25th Anniversary World Tour (see his website for details).

11The bass solo in ‘You Can Call Me Al’

The official line remains that we do not play air instruments of any kind. Under pain of torture, though, we’ll confess: every time Baghiti Khumalo’s fruity slap breakdown hits at 3:45, we start wanking off an invisible donkey like Alan Partridge in the static home.

12It’s got the best vocal harmonies ever

The voicebox pile-up at the climax of ‘Diamonds’ makes the Beach Boys sound like five horny foxes going through your bins.

13The ‘Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes’ riff

Circa 1987, cattle-brained guitar-shop dullards were all learning ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, when they really should have been mastering Ray Phiri’s glorious flourish at the 0:56 mark: a riff so glistening that it sounds like J.Lo’s jewellery box being tipped over a waterfall.

14Joe Strummer was a fan

The late Clash man told ‘The Los Angeles Times’ in 1988:

I don’t like the idea that people who aren’t adolescents make records. Adolescents make the best records. Except for Paul Simon. Except for ‘Graceland’. He’s hit a new plateau there, but he’s writing to his own age group. ‘Graceland’ is something new.

15You can dance to it

And not just the almost-imperceptible-head-nod that you do when you’re leaning on the merchandise stand. We mean properly dance, using your hips and hands, like a disgraced uncle at a wedding disco.

16It came out of nowhere

Squabbling with Art Garfunkel and struggling to shift the tepid ‘Hearts & Bones’, in 1985, Paul Simon was widely perceived to be a washed-up half-pint. Then this happened: a comeback so monumental that it should have come with stigmata.

17It sounded fantastic live
‘Graceland’ without the lavish instrumentation would have sounded flat and neutered, like when McAlmont and Butler played ‘Yes’ without a string section. Thankfully, Paul Simon threw his chequebook at the ’80s concerts to create a sound that scraped the heavens, and he’ll surely do the same in 2012.

18Every song is truly great

Classic Album Protocol stipulates that somewhere in the tracklisting there must lurk an incongruous turd that always comes on during a break in conversation at house parties. Not ‘Graceland’, which genuinely renders the skip button obsolete.

19It’s aged magnificently

Now a quarter-century old, if ‘Graceland’ was a person, it would have a sallow complexion and would occasionally need to get up for a piss in the middle of the night. Somehow, Simon’s original ‘Graceland’ production job retains a spring-heeled vigour that has left purists moaning about the remastered version.

20It was a break from thrash-metal

Given that ’86 was the high-water mark for grunting men in studded wristbands singing about pestilence, it’s no wonder that the lush intro of ‘Crazy Love Vol. II’ was like being let out of a headlock and given a head-massage.

21It’s far better than the actual Graceland

Unless you’re an corpulent couple from Iowa called Harv and Jolene, who have a scatalogical obsession with a dead man’s thunderbox.

22It gave world music a good name

The body of opinion that Peter Gabriel should be beaten with a nose-flute and drowned in a hessian sack was countered by ‘Graceland’, which drills home the fact that five pockmarked white boys is not the only recipe for musical alchemy.

23It deviates from ‘guitar-bass-drums’

Previously, the accordion and penny-whistle were kept in a big metaphorical box marked: ‘For Use By Misguided Buskers and The Corrs Only’. From the opening wheeze of ‘The Boy In The Bubble’, this album broadened rock’s horizons.